26 Jun
2012
26 Jun
'12
3:49 p.m.
However, there
is a case to be made, I think, for buying the few tools
you need -- and getting high quality ones -- rather than buying a large
set of cheap tools.
FOr example, you mentioned taps. I tend to buy only the sizes I need, anf
get good ones, rathen than buyign one of the cheap imported srts with
plenty of sizes I don;'t need and made from 'steel' that appears to
actually be cheese...
In my case, there were too many situations where slightly obscure sizes
were needed (foreign cars), so my approach was a complete set of crap PLUS good quality for all the ones used regularly.
'Course it DID get me an
What I did was to buy a small, good quality, set of the tools I knew I'd
need. And then buy special extras as needed. Nut just the ones I need.
For example, when I was repairing the steering rack on my father's car
last year I needed a crowfoot wrench. Those things are not easy to find,
and good ones are expensive (I think about \pounds 50.00 _each_. So I
measured the size I needed and bought jsut that one.
I the same way, for most comptuer repairs I use nutdrivers to turn hex
nuts and bolts. But when working on the HP9800 machines, you need an
11/32" open-ended spanner to get the rear panel (carries the mains
transofrmer, etc) out. That's not a common size here. I jsut bought that
one spanner.
[...]
People like us aren't going to stick with a rigid
structure. By high
school, my projects were becoming orthogonal to my teachers' lesson plans.
You
and I have a lot in common... was teaching programming, I learned that with SOME
students, the best
thing that I could do was point a direction and get out of the way.
A couple of teachers foudn that to be a good idea with me. Give me access
to the aparatus and let me think up experiments.
-tony